In Tech: Mobile app, mobile phone, online TV

NEW YORK (AP) _ The iconic designer behind the simulation video games “Sim City” and “The Sims” wants people to tell stories visually on their mobile phones.

Will Wright has created a mobile app called Thred. The idea is to “explore and share visual ideas with friends” _ through “threds” of images and links. For some, this can mean a collection of Internet jokes; for others, travel photos and articles. If you give Thred permission, it will access your phone’s photos and track your location so that you can post a thread of the day’s meals, or the snapshots of flowers you shot on a Sunday trip to the botanical gardens.

It’s a bit like Instagram-deluxe. Instead of just one photo, Thred lets you share a bunch. Instead of just filters, you can add text, links and stickers to your pictures.

“I’m fascinated by how much this has become a part of my life,” said Wright, 55, holding his iPhone as he showed off the app recently in a Manhattan coffee shop.

Thred joins Storehouse and other, more complex visual storytelling apps that hope to appeal to your creative side and seek to go deeper than one-off snapshots. Whether Thred will soar in popularity like “The Sims” did or fade away like “Spore,” remains to be seen.